Mehmet Çakas | Kurdish activist faces deportation despite proceedings

Kurdish activist Mehmet Çakas is scheduled to be deported from Uelzen Correctional Facility to Turkey on August 28. According to his defense attorney, Björn Elberling, the 45-year-old was officially informed of this by the prison administration on Monday.

A year ago, Çakas was sentenced to two years and ten months in prison by the Celle Higher Regional Court for "membership in a foreign terrorist organization." The case involved the PKK; he would have normally served his sentence in October 2025.

According to his lawyer, the threatened extradition is a legal first: "As far as we know, no one convicted in Germany for PKK membership has been subsequently deported to Turkey – because a fair trial cannot be expected there," Elberling explained. In parallel, a separate criminal case against Çakas is underway in Turkey.

Çakas had also filed an asylum application in Germany. This was rejected by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The activist filed a lawsuit against this, including an urgent application. However, the Lüneburg Administrative Court surprisingly rejected this six weeks ago without addressing the grounds for protection put forward. Çakas's lawyer filed a complaint about the hearing, which is scheduled to be heard on September 8th – after the scheduled deportation date.

The defense sees the deportation as an acute threat to Çakas' life and freedom. Both human rights organizations and European courts regularly document the systematic persecution and torture of political prisoners in Turkey. "The fact that the authorities in Lower Saxony are continuing to pursue the deportation, knowing the persecution our client faces there, leaves me stunned. I have experienced several trials against Kurdish activists, but this is a unique case for me," Eberling told "nd."

Cansu Özdemir, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, also expressed his dismay: "Human rights also apply to Kurds. Deportation under these circumstances would be a political scandal." In a statement, the Çakas family warned of a precedent: "If Mehmet is deported, this could be the beginning of systematic extraditions of Kurdish activists to Turkey."

At the end of February 2025, imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan called for an end to the armed struggle . The organization declared a ceasefire and began disarming in Juki . The German government, however, maintains its classification of the PKK as a terrorist organization – against this backdrop, the planned deportation of Çakas is a slap in the face to ongoing peace efforts. The Cologne-based legal aid fund Azadî is therefore calling for public mobilization against it.